Success factors: What are the most effective approaches to student support?
Lead Authors: Denisa Gándara and Bridget Timmeney1
Promise programs will have the greatest impact if they combine new financial resources with proven forms of student support.
Providing students with new financial resources is not always enough to change their postsecondary pathways. Students, especially first-generation or low-income college-goers, need support navigating both the academic and nonacademic challenges of college. Promise programs have drawn on evidence-based strategies for supporting students, such as coaching, case management, and the use of predictive analytics, to improve retention and completion. Stakeholders should consider including funding for student support in their Promise design and/or seek strong collaboration with their main receiving institutions around student support.
Policy Considerations
Promise stakeholders should integrate support services into their programs from the start and commit the resources needed to pay for them.
Services may be delivered or paid for through the Promise program itself or through the colleges recipients attend; if the latter, close alignment around goals is essential.
Best practices include the provision of personalized support; creation of a sense of belonging through summer, cohort, and other types of programming, as well as culturally relevant service delivery; and proactive interventions, rather than those that wait for students to ask for help.
Data analytics can help colleges and their student support offices help detect when a student might need help.
Administrative hurdles, such as application processes, that make it difficult for students to access benefits should be avoided.
What We Know
Research is mixed about the effects of aid on college success. Some studies have suggested that reducing the price of college is insufficient to improve degree attainment rates and a greater per-dollar impact can be gained from increasing spending on students once in college.2 Combining new financial resources with effective student support strategies offers the best path for Promise programs.
College persistence and completion can be supported by wraparound interventions for students, including personalized and “high-touch” support as well as programs that increase students’ sense of belonging in their college or university. The most successful interventions also seek to reduce or eliminate hurdles students must overcome to access benefits. As Promise program designs evolve from increasing access to improving completion, such support components are increasingly being incorporated.
The Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) based at the City University of New York (CUNY) has served as a model for some Promise programs’ support components. CUNY ASAP offers personalized academic and career advising, a summer institute, cohort-style courses with convenient scheduling, and financial support (e.g., tuition/fee waivers, textbook assistance, and transportation). The program has nearly doubled three-year associate degree completion rates.3 The ASAP model has been replicated successfully (with modifications) in other locations,4 as well as with the Detroit Promise, where the replication generated mixed results.5
Similarly, Georgia State University’s student-success initiatives, powered by predictive-analytics software, have had large, positive effects on student outcomes. These initiatives have been credited with eliminating racial/ethnic gaps in degree attainment. Georgia State’s program uses information about students to predict when they need “intrusive” advising. The university also proactively provides emergency financial aid for students flagged by the system as in need of financial support. The university then automatically disburses the aid, addressing students’ immediate needs and eliminating the bureaucratic and administrative barriers that often prevent students from accessing the help they need.
“They need the resources to properly serve the students, especially if there’s an increase in enrollment,” he said. “It doesn’t do the students a big favor if you give them money to get in the door but then don’t properly serve them and help them graduate.”
David Tandberg, State Higher Education Executive Officers
As a final example, research on the Stay the Course intervention in Texas found that providing case-management support by a social worker substantially improves outcomes for low-income community college students, especially women.6 A key finding showed that emergency financial aid alone was not enough to improve degree attainment rates.
College-student success depends not only on what services and supports are delivered but also on how they are delivered. For instance, existing studies have highlighted the importance of building community in classrooms, having diverse faculty representation, validating students’ backgrounds, fostering trusting relationships with staff and faculty, drawing on students’ strengths, and using culturally relevant materials in classrooms. This design has been incorporated in such programs as the Kalamazoo Promise where a pathways coach is assigned to each high school and a handoff is made to a Promise coach located at the local community college and another at the local four-year institution. The intentional hand-off of students and consistent staff follow-up allows supportive transitions for students who are navigating on their own or with minimal support.
Clear messaging around the availability of and nature of support is also crucial. Research suggests that misperceptions about the kind of support that will be forthcoming can hinder students’ progress toward completion.7
Recommended Reading
Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (2020). Innovation in higher education case study: Georgia State University.
This case study highlights GSU’s shift from a higher education system with significant disparities among its historically marginalized population to one that has closed its achievement gaps entirely, in part due to data-driven interventions.
Barret, B., & Lavinson, R. (2021). The 2021 Aspen prize for community college excellence. The Aspen Institute.
The Aspen Institute reports on data-informed strategies at community colleges across the nation to highlight successful practices that go beyond enrollment and graduation with a focus on advancing racial equity and closing racial educational gaps on college campuses.
Culver, K. C., Rivera, G.J., Acuna, A. A., Cole, D., Hallett, R., Kitchen, J. A., Perez, R. J., & Swanson, E. (2021). Engaging at-Promise students for success through innovative practices: Proactive advising and shared academic courses. Pullias Center for Higher Education.
Developed for practitioners, leaders, and administrators in higher education, this brief provides evidence-based practices for supporting low-income, first-generation, and racially minoritized students participating in the Thomas Scholars Learning Community. Researchers found exemplary structures and practices that support students in validating and identity-conscious ways.
Fox, M. (2022). iPad rentals, emergency funds and food pantries: What it takes to make “free college” work for all students. Youth Today.
Given the rise in student hardships amidst the pandemic, this article introduces the New Mexico Opportunity Scholarship as a legislative initiative designed to alleviate student need. The article spotlights New Mexican support systems that serve students’ nonacademic needs, such as food insecurity, technology, and transportation.
Gándara, D., Acevedo, R., & Cervantes, D. (2022). Reducing barriers to free college programs. Scholars Strategy Network.
This brief highlights barriers in program design that could impact student access and persistence. Authors advance policy recommendations aimed at ameliorating the barriers that can limit the effectiveness of free college or Promise programs.
Hefling, Kimberly. (2019). The ‘moneyball’ solution for higher education. Politico.
This article discusses how Georgia State uses student data with a predictive analytics system in order to identify which students might be at risk of dropping out. For example, the system uses students high school data in order to identify which incoming students are more likely to drop out before they even come to college, and these students are then invited to special college-prep events. It also monitors the data of current students, using over 800 academic risk factors, so that the college can intervene and provide students with resources before they drop out. The system can also be used by advisors to see which of their students need special attention. It goes on to discuss how a number of universities are adopting similar systems.
MDRC. (2021). Detroit Promise Path. MDRC.
This webpage discusses the Detroit Promise Path, a program accompanying the Detroit Promise. Promise administrators during the early days of the program found that a large proportion of students who used the scholarship did not stay in college. The Detroit Promise Path was set up to provide students with support services, modeled on the highly regarded CUNY ASAP program, to make it easier to stay in school. This site links to a video about the support program, along with interim reports on its impact.
Footnotes
The authors wish to acknowledge the assistance of Dr. Rosa Acevedo (postdoctoral researcher) and Diana Cervantes (doctoral student) at the University of Texas at Austin.
Deming, David J., Walters, & Christopher R. (2017). The impact of price caps and spending cuts on U.S. postsecondary attainment. (NBER Working Paper No. 23736). National Bureau of Economic Research.
Weiss, M. J., Ratledge, A., Sommo, C., & Gupta, H. (2019). Supporting community college students from start to degree completion: Long-term evidence from a randomized trial of CUNY’s ASAP. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 11, 253–297.
Miller, C., & Weiss, M. J. (2021). Increasing community college graduation rates: A synthesis of findings on the ASAP model from six colleges across two states. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 44(2), 210–233.
Ratledge, A., et. al. (2021). Motor City momentum: Three years of the Detroit Promise Path for community college students. MDRC.
Evans, W. N., Kearney, M. S., Perry, B., & Sullivan, J. X. (2020). Increasing community college completion rates among low-income students: Evidence from a randomized controlled trial evaluation of a case-management intervention. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 39(4), 930–965.
Kramer, J. W. (2022). Expectations of a promise: The psychological contracts between students, the state, and key actors in a tuition-free college environment. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.